Optical emission spectrometers or mass spectrometers that utilize plasma such as ICP (Inductively Coupled Plasma) as an atomization source or ionization source are widely used as general high-sensitivity element analysis equipment in the fields such as material analysis, environmental analysis, and trace analysis, etc.
In existing ICP-OES (ICP-Optical Emission Spectrometer), ICP-AES (ICP-Atomic Emission Spectrometer), or ICP-MS (ICP-Mass Spectrometer) equipment, to keep the plasma stable, the liquid sample become aerosol by means of a nebulizer (i.e., a nebulizing mechanism) in a vaporizing chamber, then, the aerosol sample is supplied to a plasma source and subjected to plasma treatment, and thus, analysis is made according to the optical emission from the plasma and the ionized sample.
In the nebulizer employed in such an analysis equipment, the following techniques are well known.
In patent document 1 (U.S. Pat. No. 4,941,618), there is a nebulizer with two parallel axes, namely with a flow channel (18) for a nebulizing gas to pass through and a flow channel (22) arranged in parallel to the flow channel (18) for a liquid to be nebulized to pass through, and the nebulizer comprises a first mesh screen (34) supported by a cap (36) downstream of the liquid flow channel (22), and a second mesh screen (38) arranged in front of the first mesh screen (34). The technique described in patent document 1 has the following structure: the first mesh screen (34) is wetted by the liquid in the flow channel (22), and then the liquid is blown by the high-speed gas from the parallel flow channel (18) to flow in droplets; in addition, the liquid droplets are refined by the second mesh screen (38) and then are nebulized.
In patent document 2 (JP2009-210435), the following triplex-tube concentric nebulizer is described, wherein, a hollow cylindrical outer tube, a hollow cylindrical intermediate tube, and a hollow cylindrical inner tube are arranged coaxially; the liquid sample or gas passes through the space formed inside the inner tube and the spaces formed between the tubes, so that the test sample is nebulized into fine liquid droplets efficiently.